28/11/2005

The French/Spanish/Belgian/Argentinian co-production Nordeste by first time director Juan Diego Solanas was awarded two major prizes at the Stockholm International Film Festival’s closing night ceremony last Saturday 26 November. The film was awarded the Bronze Horse for Best Film and the Best Actress Award was shared by Carole Bouquet and Aymará Rovera. Nordeste had previously screened at Cannes 2005 ’s sidebar Un Certain Regard.

The jury including filmmaker/Head of SVT Fiction Daniel Alfredson, Musician Pelle Almqvist, filmmaker Rodrigo Garcia, actress Helena af Sandeberg and film critic Orvar Säfström also awarded two feature film debuts co-financed by Film Four Productions in the UK: Miranda July’s Me And You And Everyone We Know, winner of the Camera d’or in Cannes 2005, was voted Best First Film, and Annie Griffin’s Festival won the Best Script. Miranda July’s film will be released in Sweden next January by Non Stop Entertainment.

Two Scandinavian films were also among the winners of the 16th Stockholm Film Festival (17-27 November). Storm the feature film debut of the Swedish filmmaking duo Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein won the Audience Award. The hip action thriller, in which a man caught in a struggle between good and evil has to solve a riddle to survive, was among the hottest titles on Trust Film Sales line-up at the last AFM. Set to be released in Sweden on 20 January 2006, the film was sold to 14 territories including the Benelux (Filmfreak Distribution), Portugal (LNK Video), Spain (Films & Piniculas), the Baltic States (Estin Film), Turkey (Pi Film) and China (DD Dream).
The Danish film Accused which screened in competition at the last Berlin Film Festival left Stockholm with the Northern Lights Award. "Accused is a film that puts appearances and the audience’s perceptions to the test, a film one easily won’t forget", said the jury.

The FIPRESCI award was given to Singapore director Eric Khoo’s Be With Me for which Adrian Tan also won Best Cinematography.